The Madness of Gun Buybacks

Andrew Cuomo's policy is full of holes.

5/15/00 11:25 a.m., National Review Online. More by Kopel on "buybacks."

Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo
held a press conference last week to announce his success in paying
Americans not to exercise their constitutional rights. Although
Congress never appropriated money for the project, Cuomo has used
federal tax dollars to conduct a "BuyBack America" program, which
Cuomo says has claimed more than 10,000 guns in recent weeks.

The program isn't really a "buyback." Since Cuomo's Department of
Housing and Urban Development didn't sell the guns in the first place,
it can't buy them "back." Nor will the program contribute anything to
public safety.

A
criminal, for whom a gun is a tool of the trade, is unlikely to sell
his tool for $50. Instead, the typical sellers in a "buyback" are the
widows of hunters, other older people, or other non-dangerous types —
rather than teenage gangsters who have suddenly decided to abandon a
life of violence.

Because most people who surrender their guns are very unlikely to
commit a violent gun crime, the public safety benefit of a buyback, if
any, must lie in reducing the supply of guns which can be stolen, or
in removing a potential suicide instrument. But the buyback doesn't
even provide much in the way of disarmament: a study of a gun buybacks
in Seattle reported that sixty-six percent of sellers had another gun
that they did not surrender. Indeed, three percent of gun sellers said
they would use the money to buy another gun, or would donate the
proceeds to the National Rifle Association. [Charles M. Callahan, et
al., Money for Guns: Evaluation of the Seattle Gun Buy-Back Program84 PUB. HEALTH REP. 474 (1994).]

Moreover, the guns sold at buybacks are often old or defective. This
shouldn't be surprising; a rational person with a gun worth more than
$50 would sell the gun at a gun store for a fair price, rather than
giving it to the government for $50.

Unsurprisingly, the social science evidence shows that buybacks have
absolutely no positive effect in reducing gun crime, gun accidents, or
any other form of gun misuse. The research is detailed in Under
Fire: gun Buybacks, Exchanges and Amnesty Programs, a book
published by the D.C.-based Police Foundation (a think tank for
big-city police chiefs).

The money wasted on the Cuomo buyback came from a Drug Elimination
Grant Program. Although Congress gave HUD money for the battle against
drugs (which are illegal), Cuomo used the money to get rid of guns,
which are not only legal, but are specifically protected by the Second
Amendment and by forty-four state constitutions.

Why is so much energy invested in buybacks by the anti-gun forces? One
reason is that it's a path of relatively little resistance. Gunowners
may fight against efforts to take their guns, but they are indifferent
to the government buying guns from other people.

Second, buybacks can be initiated without legislative approval, as
long as there's an executive branch official, like Cuomo, willing to
spend tax money "creatively" or unlawfully.

More importantly, anti-gun activists really do believe that guns are
inherently evil. The people who want the government to buy and destroy
guns enjoy the same satisfaction that others have enjoyed at book
burnings, or at the prohibitionists' rally where whiskey is poured
into the river. From the destroyers' viewpoint, there's no need to
wait for social science to find benefits from the destruction. The
destruction of the wicked object is good in itself.

In
a free country, destructionists have every right to their own
opinions, including opinions that paying other people to stop
exercising constitutional rights is a good idea. But it's hard to
balance the motives of a politician who claims not to be against
law-abiding citizens owning guns — and then takes satisfaction every
time a citizen surrenders her firearms to the government to be melted
into a slab of useless metal.

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